


Regulars

by leslielol



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Episode Related, Gen, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 03:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: Technically, they meet for drinks.Barba is drinking, and Carisi comes to berate him for all his choices, old and new.Post-18.15,Know It All





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first episode in a _long time_ that got me thinking, what happens next?
> 
> This fic takes place after the events of 18.15, _Know It All._ Spoilers throughout.

At Forlini’s Restaurant, the bartenders know Rafael Barba’s drink order by two looks. If he’s jocular, pleased and preening, and often with company, it’s on the rocks. If he’s contemplative, wearing a tight frown along with any in a myriad of expensive suits, it’s a double, neat. They can expect to see him studying his phone or a file or even just the bartop for hours, until he comes away having solved his problem. He’s not particularly talkative, so the waitstaff can only tell from the size of the tip he leaves whether or not he’s pleased with his idea. 

Usually, he’s pleased. And from what they hear of his reputation as a clever and winning prosecutor, he has every reason to be.

But tonight, all tired-eyed, his tie already nearing an escape from the knot at his throat, he’s the picture of misery.

So they start with the contemplative order, and keep them coming. 

-

Barba loses his coat, suit jacket, tie, and two buttons from his collar in the span of one drink. The second, he manages very slowly. Nary a button is touched--nor a shirtsleeve rolled--while he sits in a booth, absent of any files to hold his attention. 

Even his cell phone is on silent, and lost several times under the folds of his coat. 

There’s something cathartic, he decides, about being unreachable. _Untouchable._ Even if it’s only a pleasing veneer--a warped, ghostly image over a vastly different reality--Barba wants so much to really feel it. 

Except--when he looks across the booth he’s sat in, Barba only sees a terrible variation of those monsters he’s encountered.

Addiction and depravity. Loss, and the way it fools the living into thinking they’re as good as dead.

And perhaps worst of all--his own unbridled ambition. It feeds on those he browbeats--from the guiltiest criminal to the innocent, it doesn't discriminate. 

He tries to remember Mariana Abreu, but can’t see her for anything else than his own endgame: her--or that shell of a woman through which she functioned--poised, cool, and confident on the stand. Her mouth snapping tight around her words, clear as the crime she witnessed. She’d worn a cream turtleneck sweater to court, and black pants as narrow as pipe cleaners. 

While damning a brutal killer to life in prison, Mariana had looked downright stylish.

 _Heroin chic,_ Barba muses bitterly, and decides he hasn’t had near enough to drink. He doesn't hear himself ask, but another scotch is delivered to him, crystal glass resting just beyond his fingertips. If he were to flex his hand to open over the last drink, he'd surely topple the next. 

The sweater--like the money--was another loan from Barba. He remembers it was the intended birthday present for his then-girlfriend, tucked away in his office and still in the Ralph Lauren gift bag, bound loosely in tissue paper. 

It wouldn’t matter that he never bought a replacement; they broke up the day after the trial. 

A total coincidence, Barba thinks in hindsight. At the time, everything--every drop of rain, every crowded subway car, every red light in the City--felt like it was his fault. He cried and drank himself sick and wallowed in self-pity until he came to terms with what had been lost: a part of his soul, certainly, but more important than that--a life. A mother and a daughter, with responsibilities Mariana herself had never met, but that which could be picked up and carried, should Barba choose to entrench himself more. Should he will what he’d done into every facet of his life going forward. His bank account alone would serve as a constant reminder of what he’d gambled with, and lost.

Neither of them were saints. Barba knew it as soon as he’d given Mariana the sweater. 

Mariana didn’t realize it until after she’d spent the money. 

Another drink is set on the table. This one is tall, encased in brown glass and a flashy label with a lime on it--nothing like what Barba would order (let alone consume), so he isn’t surprised that a hand has come along with it, and a body, and a concerned-looking Detective Carisi, besides.

Carisi stares at him a moment, saying nothing. There’s a severe look to the man’s face, lines running down and out from his blue eyes, his mouth set, his chin wrinkled. He’s not happy.

Barba knows he knows. If he should feel any particular way about it, he is unaware. The scotch has taken more than just an edge off--Barba is positively stricken down the middle, halved by his solitary evening. There’s not enough of him present to work up a whole response. 

He nods, but his gaze lags on the beer. He can’t be certain, but Barba’s never seen Carisi drink the same drink twice. Even on those rare occasions where he joins Benson’s squad for a few, Carisi is prone to trying microbrew after microbrew, or the occasional cocktail--whatever sounds “neat.” 

“The lieu says you're in the clear--more or less.”

Carisi doesn’t sound relieved, which instinctively thrills Barba.

He would _love_ a fight about now.

“Come to congratulate me?” Barba says, and summons a smile up, up, up through the sick in his stomach and the knots in his throat, over his dry mouth and through the backs of his clenched teeth. 

Carisi’s eyes flicker to the tabletop. He knows the lengths Barba has gone, but can’t face the man’s own saying so.

“Ashtonja told us what you did. What she knew of it, anyway. Liv took off, but I stayed to have her identify Willard from a photo array. The grandmother came home and… I got the full story.”

Barba readies his glass at his lips and answers for himself, “So that’s a ‘no,’ then.” 

Carisi’s eyes are on him, finally. Wide and glassy, at first, before they narrows in search of an explanation that should defy all reason. 

“How could you--”

“There was a case to win, and I won it.”

“At the expense of a life--”

“You think she’d have turned it all around in an afternoon? Not gotten up the next day and found her fix?” 

“I don’t know. Thing is, neither did you.”

Suddenly, Barba doesn’t want the fight they’re going to have. He wishes Carisi would say he understands, even sympathizes with the terms Barba laid for himself to win the case. Barba wants even just the tiniest shred of pity--which is more still than he deserves--because at least then, he’d have something to rally against. If Carisi tells him he’s awful for what he’s done, and leaves it at that, Barba doesn’t know of a single argument to the contrary.

“You’re not telling me anything new,” he says. “Anything you can say to me, I’ve said to myself. So save it.”

Barba drinks well into his latest scotch, and thinks that no matter what Carisi thinks he knows, he surely cannot know it all. 

Carisi can not know, for instance, that much of Barba’s ambition is all for show, now. The man isn’t fool enough to think he can rise to elected office--only smart enough to ever look the part. He's even exacted his own defense mechanisms. Developing a distaste for the entire political crowd, for instance, was borne out of necessity--he simply could not risk being tempted into that world.

And where one impulse ended, another began: routine and heavy drinking, again--a thing of _much_ necessity. 

After the initial shock of the tragedy waned and Barba was left to sift through the facts, he’d often considered coming clean. Exposing himself and--as a young ADA--surely losing his license in the process. He’d convinced himself otherwise, reasoning that a clear conscience did little to help the daughter Mariana left behind. There was shrewdness and opportunism in the decision, of course. Tens of thousands of dollars worth, now.

Guilt often comes with a productive output.

Then, because he’s finally found himself in a position to speak this long-held promise aloud, Barba says, “I’m going to put that girl through college.”

Unsurprisingly, the statement neither soothes his guilt nor stirs his pride. 

It is--as it’s always been--the least he could do.

Having arrived at the same conclusion, Carisi shakes his head. “Maybe that was all you ever wanted, but that girl might have wanted a mother.”

Barba rolls his eyes. That’s a cheap shot sent wide of its target, and Barba’s just drunk enough to take a swing at it.

“Ashtonja didn’t have her mother, she had a heroin addict who was less capable than a ten-year-old where it counts. Mariana could get a fix, but could she keep her child clothed and fed? Or get her to school on time?” Barba’s mouth twists. “God, Carisi, she couldn’t remember the girl’s _name._ ”

Carisi doesn’t look chastised, only sad. It’s a peculiar power of his, to deflect insult and hear only what is said in the abstract. 

“It’s not your place to judge her.”

“She was my witness,” Barba says--a reminder to his place in all this. A position of great power, yes, but also incredible need. “I’d do it again. I’m fine to never forgive myself for--for a _lifetime_ of mistakes. What’s one more?” 

Shock spills over Carisi’s face, and he looks down and away, wanting to mask it but having none of the tools. He’s less surprised that Barba should have more skeletons in his closet, but the vehement anger the man has for himself, and the disregard for his own mortal soul is nothing short of _alarming._

Carisi’s lips part. They’re shiny and red, for all the pressure he’s put on them to stay twisted in a firm line of disapproval. He draws in a breath, but it feeds no response.

Barba glares at him. 

“How are you surprised?” he demands. “Stop coming at me like I’m anything more than a man who has some success in his work. Even you should know by now, that always comes with a price.” 

Carisi has one last--and lasting--word for him, there. 

“It wasn’t you who paid it.” 

And to Carisi’s credit, that one lands. It lands and it hurts. 

Barba takes another taste of his drink, but the warmth never reaches his heart. It stalls and he feels nothing for it. 

“Yeah, well, you’re in luck.” Barba stares down the wealth of crystal in his glass, and the meager helping of scotch that remains. “I'm still considering my options.”

Carisi balks. “What options?”

“I could quit. Start over. Do something else.”

Carisi’s heart begins to race; he’s never known Barba to give up, and somehow--despite everything--it didn’t cross his mind. 

“You'd never be satisfied, doing anything else.” 

Barba doesn’t think he’s wrong, but he also doesn’t think it matters. There’s something else that draws him by the hand towards this simple, final solution: a dull ache that fills the whole of him, that stirs within him in the morning and lays down with him at night. It _suffocates him,_ incessantly, but never as thoroughly as Barba finds himself wishing it would, those nights he can’t sleep because he thinks--more and more--that he’ll steal his own breath, and covet the dark, and disappear without a fight.

It’s a terrifying prospect, that much Barba can’t deny. 

He doesn’t know whether it is a sign of strength of weakness that has him--only now--considering his means of addressing the problem. He wants to try and forget himself for a time, and thinks leaving the work would help pave the way. 

“I could be happy,” he says, not meaning to. It sounds like the wild fantasy it is, but all the same, Barba is surprised that Carisi takes issue there, and responds with nothing less than _fightin’ words._

“Happiness doesn't work like that, Counselor.”

Barba huffs; he knows this angle. Carisi thinks he should seek forgiveness, and take the _official_ route, no less. But Barba doesn’t pray, not anymore, not for his soul. He thinks about the horrifying prospect of asking for Ashtonja’s forgiveness, even one day well into the girl’s future. 

_I helped your mother destroy herself._

_But, hey, didn’t you go to some swell Sorority parties?_

“Well I won’t know until I try.” 

The smile he gives is fueled solely by alcohol; it’s loose in a way that’s not natural, and _dull._ It’s nothing like the sharp little grins Barba wears when he’s beyond pleased--usually with himself, though sometimes he’s generous. 

It’s yet another unholy exchange. 

And it terrifies Carisi to think it has found a place there, crowding Barba’s features, trading his wit and his courage for an easy escape.

Carisi’s heart pounds so hard, _so loudly,_ Barba mistakes it for his own dawning headache.

“You shouldn’t leave.” 

It’s said in such a profound rush, Barba thinks the words are meant to chase after his long-gone intentions. 

“You _just_ as much as told me you think what I did was unforgivable,” Barba says, and doesn’t excuse himself the projection. He looks--really looks--at Carisi. He’s put together in a three-piece suit Barba has no doubt he inspired. There’s patterns coloring both the man’s shirt and tie--again, Barba sees his influence, there. 

Carisi is a mimic. He became a good detective after working with good detectives. He started dressing better after following in Barba’s shadow, picking up legal insights and fashion advice as if both had been his intention. He’s always first to jump towards an undercover operation, and Barba knows if there’s a file he needs and it’s not delivered by Carisi’s own hand, that’s the sole reason keeping him away. He’s off playing dress-up, assuming other names and lives and getting a real kick out of it. 

The man is ready and capable in all that he does, yet so little of it seems to exist without instruction, without _example._

“This could be your in,” Barba says, first just to see the look it puts on Carisi’s face, and then because the idea really isn’t so far-fetched. “You could work Manhattan instead of Brooklyn. Suddenly I’m gone, all these cases left behind, but not to worry--there’s a detective, _with a license to practice law,_ and he’s affable and inexperienced enough that he won’t assume the seat is his just because he fills it. You’re exactly what they want. A real catch.” 

Carisi looks _terrified,_ and it’s just what Barba wants to see.

He goes for the kicker: “I don’t know what a good word from me would get you, now, but…” 

“No, Counselor.” Carisi seems embarrassed to have to clarify, but he makes the effort in explicit, low tones: “I don’t want your job.” 

Barba rolls his eyes again, and Carisi is struck with enough curiosity to pull him clear of the scenario Barba posited. He wonders how involved Barba is with the Abreu’s lives, considering the shared mannerisms. Ashtonja rolled her eyes more than she blinked. 

But then, the grandmother herself had said Barba used to come around sometimes, hand her a check and offer to tidy up or replace the locks or go buy groceries. But that was years ago.

 _Before direct deposit,_ she’d said. 

And just from talking with the woman, Carisi gleaned that she liked Barba very much, despite everything. She thought he was a good man. 

Carisi can only imagine how awful that makes Barba feel.

“You just want to make all the easy decisions and berate me for the tough ones,” Barba says of Carisi’s quickfire protestations.

“Not giving a heroin addict a loan isn’t that tough,” Carisi mutters, the comment coming faster than he can think better of it. And it’s a misstep by any measure, but especially now, with Barba at his wit’s end, coming out from under such a stressful week. He’s shouldered a few in recent months, but yet _another_ chewed mouthful of Carisi’s disrespect--loose as the detective was with it, as of late--proves too much to take.

Barba leans forward, leading with his scotch. The glass drags across the table, and Barba is never far behind.

“Detective,” he starts, his voice eerily calm, “Or _Counselor_ \--for argument’s sake. What’s your call on letting a guilty man--a two-time rapist and murderer--go free? How many lives are you willing to risk, if not just the one? Go on, tell me I’m wrong. Or better yet--say so on your own account.” 

Then Barba moves in a way Carisi cannot fathom as human. It’s as if all the tension is cut from a rope; the man simply slackens. It almost looks like ease, but Carisi is not so easily fooled.

The man is exhausted. 

This much strikes Carisi well before the realization that he can’t tell Barba what he wants to hear.

“I’m--disappointed.”

“What am I, your father? Your sports team? It’s not my responsibility not to disappoint you.” 

The words clatter like glassware on the table. Carisi fights the impulse to jump back and avoid the spray. He nods instead, and tries to feel like how he should: that he’s embarrassed himself.

But Carisi can’t quite reach that point. There’s the thrill of animosity ballooning high over any sense of decorum, because the reality--and it is that, now, he’s heard it three ways and from the source, besides--it doesn’t hit him head on. He catches it like shrapnel, pieces striking him left and right, until he’s winded with a gut shot. He can’t believe all the facts, all at once--that Barba would ever do such a thing, that he’d spiral out so far at the prospect of a spectacular failure, that he could be so callous, _that he’d get caught._

Some small part of Carisi refuses to mesh the sordid tale with the man he idolizes. And what he does put together, he wants to lash out at, but only in superficial bursts.

Over drinks at a bar, for instance.

When the ordeal follows him home and weighs in his mind at night, Carisi knows he will want to forgive. 

“I don’t know what I’d do,” Carisi says at last. It’s obvious, but more than that--it’s kind. 

“The right thing,” Barba supplies. His gaze is dark, but whole. Carisi feels his flesh prickle and rise as the possibility of making that choice ghosts over him. Just an idea, and already--he feels sick. 

But Barba--Barba sounds sure, and ready, and defiant of any opposition Carisi may mount to combat--what?

The possible?

Carisi feels another surge of terror roil through his body. He makes for his beer, but doesn’t drink.

“I’m sorry,” Carisi says quietly. “It wasn’t my intention to harp on you about all this.”

It catches Barba off guard, though one wouldn’t know it for looking at the smooth sip of scotch he takes, or the careful look of intrigue touching only his brows.

“Literally what _else_ are you here for, Carisi?” 

Carisi shifts in his seat, then takes a too-long swig of beer. 

“I want to know what you’re going to do. About the blackmailing thing. None of this is public so what--what are you going to do? If. If that happens.”

“He got to you, too,” Barba realizes, and the jolt of perverse pleasure that gives him is just another thing he’s not proud of. “What is it, an overdue library book?” 

Carisi squirms, outright _wriggles_ under Barba’s stare, glazed-over and sideways as it is. He’s had enough to drink that even his eyes are waterlogged. 

“It’s… nothing wrong. It’s not. Except maybe, like, morally. Dependin’ on your worldview. But I don’t think that. Not--uh. Not anymore.” 

Barba ignores all Carisi’s prattling on, and cuts to the heart of the matter.

“Willard knew right where to hit you--your precious moral high ground.” Barba drains his scotch, and by the time he looks up, expectant of another, it arrives. 

“Go on,” he says. He’s eager to get his mind off himself for a time. Maybe he’ll acquire a taste for it, and better know his future could play out. “Impress me.”

Carisi’s breath hitches. Barba can hear his reticence, immediately finds it tedious, and is of a mind to simply rise from the table and take his leave. 

_I don’t really care,_ he says to himself, but what’s more convincing is that he stays, and waits, and listens.

Carisi fidgets, and Barba waits.

Carisi sucks in another trepidatious breath, and Barba listens.

“So, I have this friend--”

“Bull _shit._ ”

“No, really. A couple of friends… guys… who I met, who have their own bowling league, who are a lot of fun to hang out with.” Carisi warms-over pink, and because Barba is not in the mood to wait--Benson and Carisi certainly didn’t, in search of his answers--so he raises his chin and signals for another scotch. He follows this with a nod towards his company. 

Carisi grabs hold of it when it comes, but doesn’t drink. He answers, first: “And I didn’t know this at the time, but they’re big into, uh, drag.”

He chases the statement with a gulp of scotch, and winces after. Barba’s not yet particularly impressed. This is New York; drag queens are an ubiquitous demographic. 

“What was their team called?”

“The Lady Shockers.”

“God, Carisi, you really should have known.” 

_“Anyway.”_ Carisi goes a fresher shade of pink, and this time, Barba thinks the scotch is to blame. Carisi licks his lips and goes for a slower sip. “So we’ve all hung out and I may have… and there might be… pictures.”

Carisi rubs at the back of his neck, then joins a second hand, giving the look of pale cerements draped around his shoulders. At this juncture--with Barba forever as his guide--it’s no surprise that any broken sense of security feels like a death sentence.

“Huh.” 

Barba wishes he was in a mood to truly appreciate this revelation. As it stands, he’s forced only to consider the notion in the shadow of his own. He lets the scotch in his glass swirl as he puts this facet of the younger man to the test, propping it up against the overstuffed mental file he keeps. 

Devout Catholic, Staten Island transplant, jack of all trades, a touch too brash, one to say things without concern for the fallout, and feel things without a mind for self-preservation. 

What’s a little rouge and kitten heels thrown in?

Barba thinks, _Sure. Why not?_

“Is this why you shaved the mustache?”

The relief is palpable. It opens Carisi’s eyes wide and lets him again gaze upon Barba as a man for whom he’s invested every confidence, and found the return so much greater. But the look falters, and Carisi pits his eyes on the drink Barba ordered for him. They stray to the latest Barba ordered for himself, and Carisi pushes his away with two fingers. 

“I mean, yeah. I didn’t want to look like I think it’s a joke.” 

Barba opens and closes his mouth. There’s no such thing as a dower drag queen, at least never by his meeting. He wonders if Carisi isn’t heightening the activity to mitigate a softer truth. 

“So, you’re crossdressing, then?” 

“Jesus, Barba, if everybody hears you, what’s this asshole gonna blackmail me with?” Carisi blurts out, then shrinks back. “And no. That’s not-- _no._ It’s just what I said.”

“You _didn’t_ say,” Barba reminds him, and sighs. He’s over this. His problems, other people’s problems--that’s the whole of his life. Managing everyone’s mistakes, but never fully grasping a solution.

“I wish you weren’t talking to me,” he mutters, just to be cruel. “You’re a human migraine.”

Carisi makes a small noise at that--something like an indignant huff, except he doesn’t come running to his own defense. 

Hell, Barba thinks he may have not even heard the line.

Carisi has set his hands flat on the tabletop, and is staring at the drink sandwiched between them.

“It’s harmless,” Barba says, because he thinks it’s something Carisi needs reminding of at this point, struggling as he is to even name the thing.

“Not to me,” Carisi says, finding his voice but speaking quietly all the same. “If anybody finds out… What do I do?” He looks to Barba again, and for once it’s not a ready example he’s after, it’s only another life, as muddied and secretive as his own. Carisi is hunting for a likeminded friend to offer understanding--not assurances, not unmitigated confidence.

He certainly doesn’t have any, and Barba’s is shot.

“Like, I can only smile and shrug and say nothing for so long. If this guy decides it’s worth the time just to _fuck with me--_ ” It’s all said in a rush, and Carisi doesn’t so much as finish the thought, though the conclusion was long-ago met by both parties. 

_I’m fucked._

And the man looks terrified.

“Look,” Barba says, because he can’t help himself. He feels he has some keen insight, here, and even for his dark mood he can’t be corralled into mere quiet contemplation. 

“Willard is going to get his hands on a phone at some point. He still very well could leak all this information, if not to hinder court proceedings, then to punish those who pursued the case.” 

Barba is reminded of Carisi’s arrival, his bawdy, _you’re in the clear, more or less._

It’s just as well Carisi gets the satisfaction of being right, for once.

“The DA said if this did get out, we’d revisit the matter.” Barba looks sorry; it’s not insight he has, just experience. There’s nothing he’s gleaned from the past few days than an audience for those ropes around his neck--death threats, past mistakes, a bleak future. 

He’d kept his nose clean for decades just to get the _chance_ at this job. Maybe the pressure to succeed got to him, and he flailed under duress. Or maybe, in a week’s time, he’ll see shades of Ms. Abreu again, and he’ll act now as he did then.

Carisi might say he hasn’t learned, but Barba would reason his ideology simply hasn’t changed. 

Nevermind that it was wrong; the outcome was right, so the means were necessary.

He still thinks that.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any advice for you. I haven’t beaten his game by any stretch.” 

Carisi nods slowly. He’d told himself not to get his hopes up.

“What do Rollins and Fin think?” Barba asks.

Carisi shakes his head; _they don’t._

“On account of all the, uh, _pop-ups_ on my computer, they think I have a girlfriend, and I didn’t tell them any different.”

“Aren’t they your friends? Wouldn’t they understand better than--” Barba stops mid-sentence, and sets his jaw. It clicks--once, twice--into place, over the glide of scotch-soaked teeth. “Carisi.” 

“I just thought you might… get it.” Carisi says, and his muted confidence tells Barba Carisi’s game is exactly that. “‘Cause you’re more… tangential… to that… community?”

“Because you’ve pegged me for queer, surely I will sympathize with your _drag bro_ conundrum?” 

Carisi looks honest-to-God offended, but it passes Barba’s mind without a second thought. He’s too fixed on the disparity of their problems to consider there’s still more Carisi is not-not saying. Barba wants to belittle the other man, to expose his thinking as baseless and small-minded, _to take back the scotch._

“I could lose my career, my livelihood, all that I’ve worked for, all I know how to do, the one thing I have that’s _mine,_ but your own proclivities might prove _embarrassing._ Oh _boo hoo._ ” 

“So you don’t want to quit, then,” Carisi says at once, then finds, holds, and bears Barba’s gaze.

“No.” 

Somehow, it feels like the greater revelation.

Barba throws back the rest of his drink. Carisi continues to nurse his beer. For a long time, neither man speaks. 

Barba isn’t giving Carisi anything more--his truth, his wrongdoing, his defiance. It’s all on the table. Carisi has a full hand he’s been cowering over, and Barba thinks it’s time enough he show his cards.

“It wasn’t just the one time.”

Barba narrows his eyes. He’s still not playing.

“Like, three times,” Carisi says, then remembers New Year’s. “Four.” 

He wriggles again, and cops to a truth Barba would have thought he’d give at the outset, if indeed he wasn’t hiding something greater. 

“It’s not really my thing.”

The wrinkled nose and haplessly shrugged shoulders make the statement whole. 

And that _is_ surprising.

“You must really like,” Barba starts, then stops. “These guys.”

Carisi’s lips part again. When he nods--a miniscule effort--they close. They he turns, ducks his head and shakes it violently. It’s a tsunami of activity compared to the drip-drip of responses he’s given, both verbal and not.

 _“Jesus,”_ he says, an open admonishment. He stares blatantly at Barba, now, with wide eyes under pinched brows. He looks sick with himself, even moreso than the predicament they’ve found themselves in. 

“I’m sorry. Me in a dress and you--in your situation. My shit doesn’t even rate. I’m sorry. I just got,” he swallows dry, but instead of reaching for the scotch or even his beer, he keeps his attentions fixed squarely on Barba. There’s nourishment there, he’s sure. Still. 

“I just got scared. Seeing what all this meant for you.” 

Barba finds he can’t speak to that.

He’s scared, too.

The sounds of mild excitement carries throughout the bar. A hockey game is playing--has been for some time, though neither man can be blamed for not taking notice. The next breath Carisi takes in is expelled with a shudder. 

Barba keeps composed; he’s had decades of practice.

“I’m sorry for getting on your case about… everything,” Carisi tells him. “I know you’re not exactly going easy on yourself right now.” 

Barba wonders what could _possibly_ have given him away. His rumpled attire? The pain written liberally over his face, hugging the corners of his eyes? The slight sway in his shoulders as he continued to lose himself to shame and drink in equal measure?

The clothes are too obvious, the hurt too palpable. Barba watches Carisi’s blue eyes settle on the latter option: the empty glass in Barba's hand.

Carisi thinks if he lets this moment fall away, Barba will order another, and another, and the night will slip away from him. In the haze, he may even acquiesce to those harsher notions he set for himself. Carisi doesn’t want that for Barba, no matter how the man’s mind tips towards morality in a way Carisi doesn’t yet understand. Never mind that he's curious.

To Carisi’s immense surprise, Barba beats him to the punch.

“Want to split a cab?”

“I’ve got my car. Want a ride?” Carisi’s already half-standing from the booth. Barba doesn’t think he’ll hear ‘no’ even if he says it, so he collects Carisi’s half-finished scotch and drains it in one. 

“Fine.”

-

Barba’s steps are slow as they depart Forlini’s. It’s raining--a light mist on the edge of snowfall--but Carisi doesn’t hustle him along. He turns up the collar on his jacket, and hesitates just a moment before deciding not to lay a hand on Barba and do the same.

Barba doesn’t mind getting a little ruined, though he hardly feels the rain.

Carisi opens the passenger side door for Barba, and hovers nearby in case the man needs help. Barba’s a little off, but he manages alright. He waits before Carisi is settled in and punching the radio to silent before thanking him for his unspent efforts, all the same. 

“I told the Lieu I wanted to talk with you more, but she said to give you some space.”

“Are you asking me to cover for you?”

“I’m just saying--that’s why she didn’t find you first. She’s taking her own advice.”

“She understands,” Barba says. “Maybe one day you will, too.”

Carisi can’t shake how it sounds like a threat.

“Maybe.”

They’re stalled at a third red light before Barba speaks again.

“So you’re dating one of these friends of yours, right?”

“Yeah.” It comes out breathless and over-warm, like Carisi’s been holding it in his cheek the entire night.

“Good for you.”

The cars ahead of them drag along the slick roads, and people on sidewalks hustle by, umbrellas drawn and shoulders hunched. 

“It’d be weird, otherwise,” Barba decides, and posits the scenario: “You just fell in with a group of drag queens? Like they’re a gang?” 

Carisi smiles shyly at that, and Barba feels inexplicably sick. He lets his head rest against the cool glass of the passenger side window, and doesn’t care that he looks like the lousy drunk he is.

“Paul’s really great,” Carisi confirms.

“So what are you worried about?” Barba asks, but doesn’t wait for--much less expect--Carisi to respond. “That Willard’s going to expose the fact that you have a surprisingly active social life?” 

Carisi’s silence speaks volumes. Barba supposes he’s hardly the mascot for being out and proud. 

“Pretty much, yeah.” 

“Show me a picture.”

Carisi’s eyes bug. “I deleted them all.”

“Not those. Just him, you and him.”

He does so, at the next light. Barba can’t decide if he’s hesitant or a mindful driver. 

He’s not surprised that Carisi does as he’s asked. Barba knows he’s lost something in their exchange tonight, but it’s not the man’s trust.

(It doesn’t hit him until much later, but Barba takes greater solace in that fact than he could have ever imagined.)

In the picture are Carisi and Paul, smiling ahead of what looks like the inside of a sports arena, a particularly unappetizing helping of boxed nachos between them. The man in question has a pretty eyes and a great, wide smile. Carisi is positively demure in comparison, but the look on his face is relaxed and happy, and really, that’s the draw of the image, the takeaway, and Barba comes away with little else. 

“He’s cute.” 

“Yeah?”

Carisi’s response is pitched like a question, so Barba has some fun at his expense.

“You don’t agree?”

“What? No, he’s crazy hot.” 

Carisi’s cheeks go pink as he jerks back and he stares down the road. Barba puts the phone on the dashboard and Carisi shoots out a hand to collect it immediately. 

“It’ll be fine,” Barba says. He even believes it a little bit. “You’ll be fine.” 

Carisi finds he doesn’t have the words to share--or perhaps, the will to share them--until they arrive on Barba’s block. As Carisi doubles back to park, and Barba wrestles with his seatbelt, the car becomes a flurry of activity such that his words--vast as they are--would not be unwelcome.

“It’s not unforgivable.”

Barba stills, a deer caught in the headlights, his life on the line. 

The spell is quickly broken and he shakes his head; it doesn’t work like that.

“I’m not asking for anyone’s forgiveness,” he insists, and his voice doesn’t waver. He opens the car door but stalls a moment, eyes on the dashboard. He turns to Carisi, his eyes clear, even if their corners still hurting. 

“And it’s like you said. I don’t get to set the price I don’t pay.” 

Carisi doesn’t have a response. He swallows and tries not to think about how he’s still in awe of this man. 

Rafael Barba is as cutthroat as he is kind. It’s a damning combination, and not without its unforeseen outcomes.

Obviously, the victims win and the culprits lose. But the innocent suffer, and Barba--

Carisi nearly chokes on the dry taste in his mouth.

Barba stays exactly the same. 

The weight he’s taken upon his shoulders keeps him still--not for fear that he could collapse, should he move just a toe out of line, but because if he moves, if he falters, the load will fall. 

All that ambition and fortitude, and nowhere to go. 

Carisi takes some solace in the fact that he can’t imagine such a stagnant existence, but the feeling is churned out of him as he watches Barba disappear into his apartment building. 

The man is tired. The second chance he’s been given is the carrot tied to the end of a very long, very heavy stick. He’s beaten down, but not yet beat. That particular fate still hovers, millimeters above his head. 

Carisi can’t shake the hurt look he’s seen in Barba’s eyes, and more than that--the way they held, hardly blinking, never giving themselves over wholesale to the guilt that had his heart in a vice, or the shame that tempered his dreams. 

The ordeal had transformed him and _that,_ Carisi realizes much too late, was a costly consequence.

Carisi knows he’ll return to work tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. 

After that--neither man can be sure.

-

At Forlini’s Restaurant, the bartenders don’t know Detective Sonny Carisi’s drink order.

Pretentious local microbrews, Bud Light Lime, Bloody Marys. The man will drink _anything._

Tonight, as he makes an unexpected second visit, he orders scotch.


End file.
